Kuala Lumpur: Of fireflies, street art and all kinds of rotis

Kuala Lumpur: Of fireflies, street art and all kinds of rotis

Kuala Lumpur: Of fireflies, street art and all kinds of rotis ByPreeti Verma Lal Mar 08, 2025 03:42 PM IST Share Via Copy Link A food lover’s paradise, a street art lover’s haven, Kuala Lumpur is also one of the best places in Asia to see a huge colony of fireflies.

Oooh…I’m a firefly, Burning brightly in the cult of billion souls

Lorong Petaling 2 has street art that depicts trading activities in ancient times. (Photo: Preeti Verma Lal)

Ohhh… I’m a firefly, Burning relatively bright…. (Dylan Thomas)

In the coal black night, the Selangor river was quiet, its quietude broken only by the hissing of the motorboat and the waves scattering away from the noise. I had driven nearly 70 kilometres from Kuala Lumpur to see thousands of Pteroptyx tener (let’s keep it simple by calling them fireflies), the 5mm beetles congregating on the berembang trees in the deep mangrove forest flanking the long, meandering Selangor river. (Also Read | New Orleans Mardi Gras: Beads, masks, floats & an extravaganza like no other)

Nattily dressed children were giggling excitedly about the lightning-bug they had never seen. Innocent questions were being tossed around the fibre-boat. “Is there a bulb fitted in their bum?” “Why do adult fireflies live for only 61 days?” “Why are the females wingless?” Before the parents could chirp their wisdom, the boatman hushed everyone and switched on a rectangular board with flickering yellow light.

“Look left. Don’t be noisy. Do not use the camera flash.” The boatman was spewing instructions but no one was listening. The dark night was illuminated by the magical bioluminescent beetles - hundreds of them flitting on the berembang trees. As if the angels had fitted a series of twinkling fairy lights across the mangrove that is often described as one of the largest firefly colonies in Asia. This was not my first encounter with fireflies but never before had I seen thousands twinkling together in a dark night. Dylan Thomas was right, they were burning brightly in the cult of billion souls. As the night got darker and the river quieter, I returned to the jetty with the twinkle of the Pteroptyx tener in my heart.

Street Art

Next morning, the fireflies were still lurking in my heart, but I had to walk the streets in old China Town in search of wall art where pop culture, history, vignettes of life and stark messages are narrated through unruly and deft strokes of red, purple, blue, green and vibrant yellows. A little girl with brown bangs looking greedily at an ice cream cone, a Free Palestine poem stencilled in burnished orange next to a large poppy flower and a black/white painted keffiyeh, red Chinese lanterns hanging from blue clouds, a green wriggly worm with human face proclaiming ‘No Parking, only crawling’, and a few cartoonish humans adding a little mirth to the occasional sombre tone of the wall artists.

However, it was the sepia in the Lorong Petaling that had me mesmerised. On a long wall hitting a dead end, days of the yore were handpainted in tones of brown. Vignettes of a marketplace complete with a hand-pulled rickshaw, a bare-bodied man carrying meat on a stick, a boney man in a hat ladling food into a bowl…A little boy towing a bicycle and a woman eagerly selling her wares.

In back alley named Kwai Chai Hong (‘Little Demon’ lane), murals depicting life in Chinatown in the 1960s turn fascinatingly interactive - most of them are painted in a manner that the visitor can become a part of the painted scene. A once neglected alley, the restored Kwai Chai Hong street won Best Heritage Attraction in Kuala Lumpur at International Travel Awards 2021.

In Petaling, when your knee turns wobbly with all the walking, step into Hungry Tapir for the best vegan food in the neighbourhood.

Then, I stumbled upon a roti story - of the Empress Dowager Cixi who was picked as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence and later served as a regent for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. And her love for the Imperial Crispy Beef Patty that she tasted in a small town on her way out of Beijing. Empress Cixi loved the patty that has now metamorphosed into round crispy Chinese Imperial Beef Roti, the hot favourite on Kuala Lumpur’s street.

I am neither an Empress nor a meat-eater, hence had to forego the beef roti that the aristocrats loved. But in a mamak (think of it as a casual, inexpensive eatery that derives its name from Tamil word maa-ma {maternal uncle} and is mostly run by Muslims of Indian origin), there were countless rotis on the blackboard menu - Roti Canai, Roti Tisu, Roti Bomb, Roti Cobra, Roti Fujima, Roti Jepun, Roti Telur Bawang, Roti Sardin, Roti Hawaii - each with its own distinct filling or topping. I had walked into the Mamak for Roti Canai that has been ranked the world’s best bread, by TasteAtlas, an international food guide website. Roti Canai was awarded a total of 4.9 stars, putting it on par with Colombia’s pan de bono.

Even before I could tear the Roti Canai served with a bowl of dal, I was distracted by the gigantic Roti Tisu (also called Roti Tissue because it is as thin as a tissue). The sweet Tisu resembles a tall tepee, large enough to feed four humans and host a swarm of small birds. In Kuala Lumpur’s mamak, I sat in a crowd and tore Roti Canai for dinner. But my heart lay far away in the fireflies of Selangor. Nothing is prettier than them!